rolling regional thug thread 2012

noz is just tired i think

i think he gets a little caught up in putting different people on arbitrary sides of an ARTISTRY vs. CHASING CASH false binary instead of putting things plainer, more frank terms

i think there's some truth to what he's saying in the keef example in the sense that his increased visibility has definitely led to a string of collabs that have been pretty underwhelming, and there's certainly a chance that his next full tape will be bogged down by a bunch of guests. that said... is that deej's fault? no, of course not. and deej's post is pretty accurate. the gawker story has 65k views right now, which by gawker's standards is not really a huge number (no offense to deej).

the rap universe in general is shrinking, the underground and pop are coming together... 2 chainz is a good counter example to the sort of come-up that he's talking about, but it's not like at this point where he guests on every single rap song that he's not as much a part of the problem. i'm not sure why pop charts are not as accessible to rappers anymore, but that's as much to do with what noz is talking about as do blogs.

i feel bad for anyone who one minute has their own career, no matter how big or small, and then the next has almost no choice but to take a seemingly important opportunity in front of them and turn their biggest song into a posse cut shitshow with pusha t and big sean

after getting kanye's "i don't like" verse stuck in my head for like half a day last week i would like to declare it the worst rap of 2012 hands down btw

TRIFECTA

oh wait that's pusha's

keef is a bit of a tough example because he's so young and theoretically so impressionable, but all rappers regardless of how they came up are eating each other just to stay alive. dreamchasers 2 has way too many guests. once you reach a certain level right now, regardless of how you come up, you're going to feel pressure to cave to that mentality where you check off all the right guests (wale! 2 chainz! big sean!) etc. that's probably my main gripe with rap right now, and blogs are only a small part in that.

"pay homage, or k's vomit" is a great line in that pusha verse

blogs did topple the old models of both A&R & hype, but i don't think that explains rap's shrinking market in pop

i don't really get all the talk about guests on Dreamchasers 2, the first Dreamchasers also had guests on about half the tracks, nearly all major label artists (if of generally lower star power). not a huge leap or change of approach at all imo.

uh idk dude. he went from young chris, beanie sigle, rick ross (three times), yo gotti & some philly rappers to drake, jeremih, big sean (twice), kendrick lamar, fabolous, french montana, wale (twice), 2 chainz & mac miller. i think the homogenization is pretty obvious.

obviously this won't happen but i'd prefer if the pre-album mixtapes be collaboration heavy and then the actual album be more about showcasing the artist.

i dont think his original post was per se about me, and seemed more targeted at the headline i didn't write, but nonetheless i thought it was overstated. the story is resonating with people as much as the music, sure, but i'm not sure that i see them as intractable

wait. i misused that word. i meant you cant pull apart the music & teh story

i didn't even know he was on house arrest. but then i don't know shit about shit.

should pt out that the piece was actually at like 45k views until the kanye cosign

yeah most of the collabs have been so-so, although i liked the Trel track. "Finessin" is probably the best post-mixtape track, and its just aite relative to "3hunna" or w/e

i'm interested to hear it, although i'm willing to bet that once summer comes around keef's buzz will have dimmed & louie's will have risen slightly just based on the material i've heard from each recently & the assumption that louie will start to flood the streets

this is speaking purely of local coverage, btw

reflecting some more, it kind of seems to me like rap bloggers are almost more mad that their jobs are to be bloggers than anything else. like, there's not a zone for rap blogs or publications where you can actually weigh in on the relative merits (& lack thereof) of an artist; instead, all that happens is someone on rap radar is forced to post about keef so they just express how much they think he sucks, and post about him. meanwhile the fans are just posting I DONT LIKE on twitter over & over (guilty, or i was) & there's a lot of noise and he ends up in magazines & people just feel angry about how it feels like hes being forced on them

im saying this because lately it feels like a lot of people have come at me as if i'm blindly endorsing any & all keef material, or that i couldn't possibly have nuanced opinions about his work, or dislike some & like others, or see his relative shortcomings. i dont think anyone who likes some of keef's music has really inflated him to be something he's not, and so the backlash ends up feeling out of proportion

i complained about something similar w/ the killer mike record, just felt like a lot of the enthusiasm was a bit over the top & possibly affected by political sympathies, and i was like, i'd just like to see some more substantive critical writing about it that didn't take his general agreeableness as an inherent positive, and got someone saying NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT KEEF and i was like, wait, what?? b/c locally hes just SO controversial, i didn't think ANYONE was blanket pro-keef, he seems super divisive, but i guess when you live in an area where the real buzz is more distant and all you see is a few stories i've written about him that don't go into much music criticism & are more journalistic in nature, followed by a bunch of blogs/tumblrs picking up on it, you might see it as blanket enthusiasm?

idk been thinking about this stuff

i guess end of day i don't get why it matters that hip press jumped on him, as if there wasn't a soulja boy or a d4l or any other number of rappers who had big regional hits that came out of nowhere. this seems like an excuse to bemoan hype w/out actually addressing that its the music people like about this, if the music wasn't there, if 'i don't like' wasn't charting (w/out the remix), then maybe he'd have a point

like, if i hadn't written about this what would the difference be? a few months extra time spent through word of mouth until someone else cosigned him?

shit was going to happen period

eh... Cuz My Gear is great imo, one of my songs of the year so far. Partly because of RiFF RaFF of course, but also partly because I always think the hook is really about Kanye and them who only want Keef for his "ear".

holy shit england what are you doing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCTxMZrPAYo&feature=branded

what a shitshow

"i got her brain training - no DS" *barfs*

can obama ban "(feat. Wale)"?

not really feeling the new Curren$y so far :/

Rapper Lil Phat Killed in Atlanta Shooting.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rapper-lil-phat-killed-atlanta-shooting-335266

i have spent a month trying to think of anything interesting to say about the future album and now i hate it

i also REALLY hate spaceghostpurrp what is this shit?

yeah spaceghost is pretty stupid -- it SOUNDS good but it's just straight pastiche

He need's a ghost-writer... lol

I don't think it even *sounds* good though.

i think i might have become an old person rap fan cuz i like this way more than most young rappers i hear these days. it's not ground-breaking or anything but it sounds gorgeous, most of the tracks have beats that really push my pleasure buttons. the two singles are two of my favourites over the past year and the rest of the album supports them nicely.

i grant that it doesn't feel massively exciting but i think this might be a function of krit's mixtapes having already provided us with as much krit as we really "need". the mixtape-to-album transition seems pretty vexed right now for a lot of rappers, either stylistically or just in terms of over-saturation.

uhhh wrong thread never mind!

Boo Rossini ft Lil Boosie - Money Cash Hoes
http://www.sharebeast.com/sir2r30m05ht

this song, this is my kind of song

http://soundcloud.com/sofowl/spark-up-prod-clockwork-muzik

FowL - Spark Up

Hey goons. We're covering 'Loyalty' by Invy da Truth over at TSJ this week. Admittedly, I haven't been on top of rap this year as much as I'd like, but I didn't think I'd heard about him from any of y'all, and the track (esp. the production, but Invy as well) is pretty great, imo.

http://www.egotripland.com/invy-da-truth-loyalty/

Any thoughts? Anyone know what his deal is? For some reason I think I read somewhere that he's from Chicago.

ego trip says hes from detroit

myspace said chicago - http://www.myspace.com/invy22 - but who can trust myspace.

St Spittin 'Lighters & Ink Pens Vol. 1' has some jams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gp_MBudC94
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHG8qz1LMZI

Spark Up is awesome.

I never read the Gawker piece before. Gotta say, DJ Kenn's story is kind of amazing, somehow more interested in that...

agree

This is why white people lock there car doors when they see black people on the street

Dr33mCrush3r 5 hours ago

@Dr33mCrush3r Since white people haven't heard of chief keeF I find that unlikely.

mymarkis666 1 hour ago

anticipating the new armstrong tape

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=GJxLVUuK0TI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJxLVUuK0TI

I never read the Gawker piece before. Gotta say, DJ Kenn's story is kind of amazing, somehow more interested in that...

― MikoMcha, Monday, June 11, 2012 4:19 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree

― tpp, Monday, June 11, 2012 5:12 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kenn is a real interesting dude but i still think keef's is the real story at the end of the day & kenn is a part of that, rather than the other way around. keef's the one who galvanized kids throughout the city and kenn's production talents are notable but not bigger than the wider story about what's happening here.

im worried about hype but only to the degree that it sets unreasonable expectations. but in keef's case, i don't think it's really there... people are interested in his story, where he's from and the songs he's recorded. i dont see why 'hype' would keep him from recording songs like he's done already.

specifically i wanna know more abt this bit:
Kenn had planned to spend just a year in the United States, but within ten months of moving to New York, he flew to Chicago. He spoke little-to-no English, and knew nobody in the city; he just knew he wanted to make music. Chief Keef's uncle Keith discovered him walking down the street in Woodlawn (a neighborhood that is 98 percent African American), and found him a place to stay. "He took me to an apartment right there across the street"—Kenn gestures out the front window—"and I stayed over there and started to do music. Keef came through, Santana came through, and we started recording."

I'm not worried about the hype at all. The man has minor hits, a story to go with them and a production unit with a defined sound. Let's not pretend as if we would be doing him a favor by not listening, writing, talking, quarreling etc. That stuff is plainly hypocritical. This music was made to be heard. If it's out there, it's up for grabs. Keef's objective has never been to become the new Andre 3000. He either makes more hits, more music worth talking about, or he doesn't. End of story. Casting him as some sort of victim to the hype machine is just in bad taste.

DJ Kenn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5VCtngStMY#t=1m27s

Errr... 1m27s - the time embed didn't work.

http://fearlessradio.com/component/k2/item/2698-disrespectful-radio-05-01-12